black squirrels

In Article <witkowsk.1139733313C at cshl.org>, witkowsk at cshl.org (j a
witkowski) wrote:
Sorry - some words were missing from my posting:
>I saw a very dark squirrel last year and a couple of weeks ago one that was
>black (or at least so dark it seemed black). I think that there was WHITE fur
>at the tip of the tail. It did seem smaller and its tail less bushy than the
>regular grey squirrels around here. Also its behavior was rather different.
>It seemed distinctly more "nervous", not letting me get at all close to it
>as I tried to get a photograph using 300mm lens. It did not have the same
>foraging pattern of the greys and seemed to passing through. I haven't seen
>it since. In few of the extreme scarcity of this form IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD, I
>presume it was a melanic mutation.
J. A. Witkowski
Banbury Center
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724-0534
witkowsk at cshl.org